PRUEBAS EN LABORATORIO QUÍMICO

In linking the ‘strategic importance’ of Okinawa (even with its ‘burdensome’ aspect) to the ‘big picture’ of ensuring ‘security’ and ‘prosperity’ in the Asia-Pacific, these officials have thus created a chain of connotation in which it is impossible to question the presence of US forces in Japan – and especially thosein Okinawa – lest the integrity and future of the alliance, as well as the economic and human security of the entire regionitself is undermined. Given this strategy, it is unsurprising that the ascent of the DPJ into office in 2009 on the back of a manifesto which outlined such desired goals as revising the SOFA, ‘re-examining the realignment of the US military forces in Japan and the role of US military bases in Japan’, and counterbalancing the USJA with an enhanced focus on the UN and diplomacy with other Asian nations resulted in consternation and criticism from alliance managers within the USG and Japanese central bureaucracy.88

Even before the beginning of the 2009 election campaign, ‘managers’ like Kurt Campbell warned in private meetings (such as one which took place in July 2009 between him, then the East Asia-Pacific Assistant SecState, and DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada), that

89

http://japan.kantei.go.jp/koizumispeech/2005/01/21sisei_e.html; Abe 2007b; Fukuda 2008; Abe 2014a; MOD,

Japan Defense Focus, 1 (March 2006), available online at: http://www.mod.go.jp/e/jdf/pdf/jdf_no01.pdf; MOFA, ‘Diplomatic Bluebook 2002’, 2002, available online at:

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/2002/index.html; MOFA, ‘Diplomatic Bluebook 2005’, 2005, available online at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/2005/index.html; MOFA, ‘Diplomatic Bluebook 2006’, 2006, available online at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/2006/index.html; MOFA, ‘Diplomatic Bluebook 2010’, 2010, available online at:

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/2010/html/index.html; MOFA, ‘Diplomatic Bluebook 2011’, 2011, available online at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/2011/html/index.html; MOFA 2012; MOFA, ‘Diplomatic Bluebook 2013’, 2013, available online at:

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/2013/html/index.html. 87 _{MOFA 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2010, 2012.}

88 _{Kersten 2011, p. 17; Ellis Krauss, ‘Crisis Management, LDP, and DPJ Style’, Japanese Journal of Political}

Science, 14:2 (2013), pp. 177-199, p. 182; DPJ, ‘The Democratic Party of Japan’s Policy Platform for Government: Putting People’s Lives First’, 2009, available online at:

http://www.dpj.or.jp/english/manifesto/manifesto2009.pdf, p. 28.

89 _{James Zumwalt, ‘A/S Campbell Meets DPJ Secretary General Okada’, Wikileaks, Wikileaks} cable:09TOKYO1644_a. 21 July 2009c. Available online at:

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TOKYO1644_a.html.

support in the United States for a strong Alliance is bipartisan, and that the DPJ must take the steps necessary to ensure that it is not perceived as being anti-American. Such a perception would send the wrong message to China and North Korea, raise doubts about the bilateral relationship among our two peoples and would probably undermine popular support for the DPJ.

These warnings were issued following a similarly hard line delivered by Clinton after she signed the 2009 Guam Treaty with then-FM Hirofumi Nakasone: ‘I think that a responsible nation follows the agreements that have been entered into, and the agreement that I signed today with FM Nakasone is one between our two nations, regardless of who's in power [emphasis added]’.90 _{This sentiment of}

was also echoed by Japanese officials prior to the DPJ’s election. For example, DPJ Policy Affairs Chief Kiyoshi Sugawa reassured, in a 27 July 2009 meeting with then-Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at the US Embassy in Tokyo James Zumwalt: ‘because the party has been in opposition, it has not been privy to much of the detailed information related to strategic planning behind relocation. Regardless, the U.S. and Japan should proceed “step by step” to resolving differences over Futenma’.91

Once the campaign kicked off, however, the fairly vague promises in the manifesto about ‘re-examining’ the realignment of US forces turned into a full-fledged promise by future PM Hatoyama to ‘[reopen] negotiations with the US over the base agreement and [move] Futenma completely off Okinawa’.92 _{This promise – and the subsequent reiteration of this goal once actually}

taking office in September 2009 – led to the ‘last serious crisis in the alliance’ and ‘a kind of mistrust between Japanese and US leaders’.93 _{Although the DPJ actually saw this policy change, according to}

Hughes, as ‘an effort to strengthen the long-term durability and fundamental basis of the U.S.-Japan alliance by seeking to remove once and for all the nagging thorn of Futenma in the side of the bilateral relationship’, officials in both Tokyo and Washington’s diplomatic corps did not necessarily share the same view.94

US SecDef Robert Gates’s October 2009 meeting with Japanese FM Katsuya Okada on the Futenma issue, for example, was interpreted by the Japanese media as a ‘scolding’ session for considering any other option for the relocation but Okinawa; successive visits by President Obama and Hillary Clinton echoed Gates’s message that ‘the move should take place as planned and without negotiation’.95 _{This is not to say, however, that US officials alone were unhappy with the about-face}

on Futenma. In December 2009, for example, Hatoyama’s own FM Mitoji Yabunaka told then- Ambassador John Roos in a private meeting that ‘it would be beneficial for the U.S. to go through the basic fundamentals of security issues with the Prime Minister’ and ‘that it was important to

90 _{McCormack 2009.}

91 _{James Zumwalt, ‘DPJ Advisor Discusses Party’s Foreign and Security Policy Plans’, Wikileaks, Wikileaks} cable:09TOKYO1706. 27 July 2009b. Available online at:

https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TOKYO1706_a.html. 92 _{Krauss 2013, p. 182.}

93 _{Forbes 2014; Anonymous 2014e.} 94 _{Hughes 2012, p. 120.}

95 _{Krauss 2013, p. 183; Paul O’Shea, ‘Overestimating the “Power Shift”: The US Role in the Failure of the} Democratic Party of Japan’s “Asia Pivot”’, Asian Perspective, 38 (2014), pp. 435-459, p. 448.

impress upon Hatoyama that strong U.S.-Japan relations did not have an indefinite “shelf life” and that the Hatoyama administration could not simply set the alliance aside in favor of domestic politics without consequences. The alliance needs continued care and nurturing’.96

In the same month, a bilateral working group that had been created to resolve this issue following Obama’s visit was suspended, thus ‘marking the end of any attempts by the United States to outwardly entertain discussion or renegotiation’.97 _{‘Hatoyama toppled over the chabudai [a short}

table used in Japanese homes]’, comments a former MOFA official (notably using, here, an image from everyday Japanese life in order to make his analogy), continuing: ‘I thought the issue [of Futenma] was dead in January 2010, since you can’t put dirty dishes back on the table—you can’t put back everything exactly the same way as it was before’.98 _{Nye added in a January 2010 New York}

Times editorial ‘An Alliance Larger Than One Issue’ that the Futenma plan had been ‘thrown into jeopardy […] The new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, leads a government that is inexperienced, divided and still in the thrall of campaign promises to move the base off the island or out of Japan completely’.99

Frustration with this ‘inexperience’ or lack of clarity surrounding Hatoyama’s Futenma policy and how it could be carried out also extended to officials within the central GOJ. For example, three MOFA officials, including Permanent Mission to the UN Political Counsellor Yutaka Arima, Japan-U.S. SOFA Division Principal Deputy Director Takashi Ariyoshi, and Japan-U.S. SOFA Division Deputy Director Ryo Fukahori, all characterised in the leaked cable as ‘experienced “Alliance hands”’ – reportedly expressed their ‘displeasure’ with the ‘politicization’ of the FRF to Roos in December 2009, complained that the issue ‘had essentially tied both governments’ hands’, and that ‘even the most senior government bureaucrats had been essentially cut out of the decision-making process and were unable to coordinate with the USG on public messaging to counter inaccurate depictions of both governments' positions and discussions’.100

‘There seemed to be a tendency to regard the possibilities in an extremely binary manner’, says Mochizuki. ‘One view was that the DPJ basically was not much different from the LDP so it would be business as usual. The other view was that the DPJ would be very, very different. But in the final analysis, the prevailing opinion seemed to be that the DPJ-led government would support the

96 _{John Roos, ‘Ambassador's December 21 Lunch Meeting With Vice Foreign Minister Yabunaka’, Wikileaks,} Wikileaks cable:09TOKYO2946_a. 30 December 2009h. Available online at:

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TOKYO2946_a.html. 97 _{O’Shea 2014, p. 448.}

98 _{Anonymous 2014l.}

99 _{Joseph S. Nye, ‘An Alliance Larger Than One Issue’, The New York Times, 7 January 2010, available online at:}

www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/opinion/07nye.html.

100 _{John Roos, ‘MOFA "Alliance Hands" Express Frustration At DPJ Government's Handling Of "Secret} Agreements," FRF’, Wikileaks, Wikileaks cable:09TOKYO2875_a. 16 December 2009i. Available online at:

U.S-Japan alliance without substantial changes in policy’.101 _{Thus, even when the DPJ proved to have}

different policy priorities from its predecessors, officials in the Obama administration tended to be dismissive of them. Take, for example, a ‘scenesetter’ briefing for Obama’s November 2009 visit to Japan, in which Roos writes that Japanese voters had elected the DPJ due to its promise of

‘fundamental “change” in the way Japan is governed, including giving more authority to elected leaders as opposed to the bureaucracy’—with the placing of ‘change’ in quotation marks, and thus questioning its authenticity.102 _{Such views were reconfirmed not only by LDP contacts, but also by}

those within the DPJ, like Diet Affairs Committee Chairman Kenji Yamaoka. In an 8 December

meeting with DCM Zumwalt, he advised that ‘the best way to break through the current stalemate is for Washington to understand the current political situation in Japan and to tell Japan what it would like to do [emphasis added] in search of mutually acceptable “next best way”’.103

This misunderstanding resulted not only in criticism from US officials and media outlets (who described the former PM as, by turns, ‘the biggest loser [among world leaders]’, ‘loopy’, and

‘hapless’) but also from those at home.104 _{The visits by Gates, Obama, and Clinton, says Paul O’Shea,}

were ‘well covered’ by the domestic press in Japan, and they began to ‘mirror’ their US counterparts in their coverage of Hatoyama’s handling of the Futenma issue. For example, the Yomiuri Shimbun

‘described Hatoyama’s “intention” to “separate Japan from the US” as “extremely dangerous”’ in a 2010 editorial, while the Asahi Shimbun also ‘described the DPJ government as […] “ill-equipped” to adequately deal with foreign affairs’.105 _{In January 2010, prominent Japanese security analyst and}

then-informal adviser to Hatoyama Yukio Okamoto furthermore confided to the DCM that going forward with the established FRF plan ‘would require political courage’ and ‘questioned whether Hatoyama would be able show this kind of leadership in “ramming home” the FRF plan, as he is "too nice," and "wants to be liked”’.106 _{A current MOFA official adds that until Hatoyama and the DPJ}

promised to relocate Futenma out of Okinawa prefecture, Okinawans ‘couldn’t speak out because,

101 _{Mike Mochizuki, ‘Interview with Prof. Mike Mochizuki’, USAPC Washington Report, March 2010, available} online at: http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/resources/washington/mochizuki0310.pdf.

102 _{John Roos, ‘Scenesetter for the President’s November 13-14 Visit to Japan’, Wikileaks, Wikileaks} cable:09TOKYO2589. 9 November 2009d. Available online at:

http://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TOKYO2589_a.html.

103 _{John Roos, ‘FRF: Senior DPJ Leader Says “No Deal” This Year’, Wikileaks, Wikileaks cable:09TOKYO2815. 9} December 2009f. Available online at: https://www.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/12/09TOKYO2815.html.

104 _{Gavan McCormack, ‘Japan’s Client State (Zokkoku) Problem’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 11:2 (2013), available} online at: www.japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3961.

105 _{O’Shea 2014, pp. 451-452.}

106 _{John Roos, ‘Advisor to PM Hatoyama Says U.S. Should “Stay the Course” on Realignment’, Wikileaks,} Wikileaks cable:10TOKYO52. 10 January 2010a. Available online at:

you know, they didn’t think that was feasible. But when the Prime Minister said [it was], they thought it could be an option. Then, of course, they preferred that option’.107

What is evident from these negative characterisations of Hatoyama is that in spite of the acknowledged, growing challenge that ‘insurgent’ narratives can pose to those of the central governments (here in the form of the Futenma protests), acceptable forms of authoritative ‘knowledge’ within the latter is still limited in scope to individual actors’ respective career statuses and ‘expertise’ gained by working with/on bureaucratic committees related to the alliance.108 _{It is}

this view of ‘knowledge’ that led former ‘managers’ like Nye, for example, to characterise the Hatoyama government as ‘inexperienced’ due to its being ‘in the thrall of campaign promises’ to the Japanese public (rather than in the ‘thrall’ of, say, previous USJ agreements on the FRF project). Moreover, the suggestion that Hatoyama was playing on public opinion in Okinawa to raise political support for his administration, and that there would otherwise have been no significant challenge from local communities to the FRF’s implementation, is indicative of two salient narratives within diplomatic sites of exchange: 1) that the DPJ did not provide a ‘feasible’ solution to the Futenma issue, as it involved relocating the base outside of the prefecture (a well-established non-starter) and thus never had a serious argument to present to the alliance ‘managers’ (let alone to the Japanese and American publics); and 2) that there is a lack of political will in Okinawa to attempt to effect policy changes without some kind of encouragement or direct guidance from central government officials (who are, in employing this strategy, not truly sympathising with Okinawans, but merely trying to win votes from them).

The latter’s reproduction seemed to be affirmed in May 2010, when Hatoyama announced that his administration had been unable to find an alternative relocation site aside from Henoko. He explained: ‘in terms of the role of the Marine Corps in the totality of all US forces in Okinawa, the more I learned, the more I have come to realize their interoperability. I have come to believe that it was the [only] way to maintain deterrence’.109 _{He resigned only a month later as a result of not only}

the Futenma issue, but also due to financial scandals that had occurred involving himself and other top officials in his administration. In the aftermath of this, US media outlets such as TheWall Street Journal were quick to praise US diplomacy throughout the dispute, noting that ‘US officials

considered the “past few months a process of educating Japan’s new leaders about the importance of the alliance”’.110

107 _{Anonymous 2014e.}

108 _{Hansen 2006, p. 8.}

109 _{Satoko Norimatsu, ‘Hatoyama's Confession: The Myth of Deterrence and the Failure to Move a Marine Base} Outside Okinawa’, The Asia-Pacific Journal 9:3 (2011), available online at: www.japanfocus.org/-Satoko- NORIMATSU2/3495.

This language of ‘educating’ the party leadership or, as Yamaoka put it, ‘telling Japan what [the US] would like it to do’ appears in several cables. Okamoto, for example, ‘described himself as a blunt-speaking "tutor" to DPJ leaders on issues like the need for a U.S. Marine Corps presence in Japan, the strategic value of Okinawa, and the threat posed by a rising China’111_{, and Yabunaka}

remarked that ‘efforts to educate’ groups including ‘television commentators and politicians’ who ‘did not have as strong a grasp of security issues’ would be ‘worthwhile’.112 _{Considering that these}

officials or ‘experts’ had drawn up numerous agreements with their US counterparts over the years on the Futenma issue, it is perhaps unsurprising that they were reticent to support Hatoyama in his efforts to find an alternative relocation site.113

The DPJ, however, also evidently played a role in alienating the bureaucracy from the outset, as it ‘came to power promising that political leaders rather than elite bureaucrats would take charge […] [without creating] a systematic process to mobilize bureaucratic expertise and to present the political leadership with coherent policy alternatives’.114 _{In pursuing a discursive strategy which}

frames Hatoyama and the DPJ as ‘naïve’ and ‘inexperienced’115_{, then, these officials reconfirm the}

inherent preferableness of the status quo policy on Futenma and the USM presence in Okinawa (as opposed to any unstable or experimental alternatives) and, thus, maintaining the status quo with regards to the alliance as a whole.